scholarly journals Developmental plasticity in visual cortex is necessary for normal visuomotor integration and visuomotor skill learning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix C Widmer ◽  
Georg B Keller
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Skill Learning ◽  
Conditional Knockout ◽  
Visuomotor Integration ◽  
Visuomotor Task ◽  
Visuomotor Skills

The experience of coupling between motor output and visual feedback is necessary for the development of visuomotor skills and shapes visuomotor integration in visual cortex. Whether these experience-dependent changes involve plasticity in visual cortex remains unclear. Here, we probed the role of NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity in mouse primary visual cortex (V1) during visuomotor development. Using a conditional knockout of NMDA receptors and a photoactivatable inhibitor of CaMKII, we locally perturbed plasticity in V1 during first visual experience, recorded neuronal activity in V1, and tested the mice in a visuomotor task. We found that perturbing plasticity before, but not after, first visuomotor experience reduces responses to unpredictable stimuli, diminishes the suppression of predictable feedback in V1, and impairs visuomotor skill learning later in life. Our results demonstrate that plasticity in the local V1 circuit during early life is critical for shaping visuomotor integration.

scholarly journals Collicular Vision Guides Nonconscious Behavior

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 888-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Tamietto ◽  
Franco Cauda ◽  
Luca Latini Corazzini ◽  
Silvia Savazzi ◽  
Carlo A. Marzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Visually Guided ◽  
Visuomotor Integration ◽  
Motor Processing ◽  
Pupillary Responses ◽  
Cortex Area ◽  
Extrastriate Areas

Following destruction or deafferentation of primary visual cortex (area V1, striate cortex), clinical blindness ensues, but residual visual functions may, nevertheless, persist without perceptual consciousness (a condition termed blindsight). The study of patients with such lesions thus offers a unique opportunity to investigate what visual capacities are mediated by the extrastriate pathways that bypass V1. Here we provide evidence for a crucial role of the collicular–extrastriate pathway in nonconscious visuomotor integration by showing that, in the absence of V1, the superior colliculus (SC) is essential to translate visual signals that cannot be consciously perceived into motor outputs. We found that a gray stimulus presented in the blind field of a patient with unilateral V1 loss, although not consciously seen, can influence his behavioral and pupillary responses to consciously perceived stimuli in the intact field (implicit bilateral summation). Notably, this effect was accompanied by selective activations in the SC and in occipito-temporal extrastriate areas. However, when instead of gray stimuli we presented purple stimuli, which predominantly draw on S-cones and are thus invisible to the SC, any evidence of implicit visuomotor integration disappeared and activations in the SC dropped significantly. The present findings show that the SC acts as an interface between sensory and motor processing in the human brain, thereby providing a contribution to visually guided behavior that may remain functionally and anatomically segregated from the geniculo-striate pathway and entirely outside conscious visual experience.

scholarly journals Precision Medicine, Developmental Plasticity and Prevention of Non-Communicable Disease

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Wang ◽  
John Attia ◽  
Stephen Lye ◽  
Wendy Oddy ◽  
Lawrence Beilin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Precision Medicine ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Adult Health ◽  
Lower Systolic Blood Pressure ◽  
Adult Disease ◽  
Healthy Nutrition ◽  
Non Communicable Disease

Abstract Background: It is well established that genetics, environment, and interplay between them play crucial roles in adult disease. We aimed to evaluate the role of genetics, early life nutrition, and interaction between them, on optimal adult health. Methods: As part of a large international consortium (n~154,000), we identified 60 SNPs associated with both birthweight and adult disease. Utilising the Raine Study, we developed a birthweight polygenic score (BW-PGS) based the 60 SNPs and examined relationships between BW-PGS and adulthood cardiovascular risk factors, specifically evaluating interactions with early life nutrition. Findings: Healthy nutrition was beneficial for all individuals; longer duration of any breastfeeding was associated with lower BMI and lower Systolic Blood Pressure in those with higher BW-PGS. Interpretation: Optimal breastfeeding offers the greatest benefit to reduce adult obesity and hypertension in those genetically predisposed to high birthweight. This provides an example of how precision medicine in early life can improve adult health.

Functional postnatal development of the rat primary visual cortex and the role of visual experience: Dark rearing and monocular deprivation

1994 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 709-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Fagiolini ◽  
Tommaso Pizzorusso ◽  
Nicoletta Berardi ◽  
Luciano Domenici ◽  
Lamberto Maffei
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Postnatal Development ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Monocular Deprivation ◽  
Dark Rearing

scholarly journals Precision Medicine, Developmental Plasticity and Prevention of Non-Communicable Disease

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol A Wang ◽  
John R Attia ◽  
Stephen J Lye ◽  
Wendy H Oddy ◽  
Lawrence Beilin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Precision Medicine ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Adult Health ◽  
Lower Systolic Blood Pressure ◽  
Adult Disease ◽  
Healthy Nutrition ◽  
Non Communicable Disease

Abstract Background: It is well established that genetics, environment, and interplay between them play a crucial role in adult disease. We aimed to evaluate the role of genetics, early life nutrition, and the interaction between them, on optimal adult health. Methods: As part of a large international consortium (n~154,000), we identified 60 SNPs associated with both birthweight and adult disease. Utilising the Raine Study, we developed a birthweight polygenic score (BW-PGS) based on the 60 SNPs and examined relationships between BW-PGS and adulthood cardiovascular risk factors, specifically evaluating interactions with early life nutrition. Findings: Healthy nutrition was beneficial for all individuals; longer duration of any breastfeeding was particularly associated with lower BMI and lower Systolic Blood Pressure in those with higher BW-PGS. Interpretation: Optimal breastfeeding offers the greatest benefit to reduce adult obesity and hypertension in those genetically predisposed to high birthweight. This provides an example of how precision medicine in early life can improve adult health.

Mismatch between BDNF mRNA and protein expression in the developing visual cortex: the role of visual experience

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Tropea ◽  
Simona Capsoni ◽  
Enrico Tongiorgi ◽  
Sabina Giannotta ◽  
Antonino Cattaneo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Protein Expression ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Bdnf Mrna ◽  
Mrna And Protein Expression

Physiological consequences for the cat's visual cortex of effectively restricting early visual experience with oriented contours

1978 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-909 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Stryker ◽  
H. Sherk ◽  
A. G. Leventhal ◽  
H. V. Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Preferred Orientation ◽  
Cortical Cells ◽  
Recording Session ◽  
Rule Out ◽  
Made In ◽  
Orderly Arrangement

1. The early visual experience of nine cats was restricted to viewing horizontal or vertical lines inside opaque goggles. 2. When the kittens were 3-4 mo old, extracellular recordings were made in the primary visual cortex. To obtain a representative sample of cortical cells, units were studied at regularly spaced intervals along the course of electrode penetrations traveling oblique to the cortical surface. An automated assessment of preferred orientation using a computer-driven optical display was employed, and during the recording session the experimenters did not know which orientation(s) each animal had viewed in early life. 3. In the cats that viewed horizontal lines with one eye and vertical lines with the other during rearing, two major findings of previous workers (14) were confirmed. First, a majority of units were not selective for orientation. Second, units with preferred orientations near vertical tended to be activated exclusively by the eye that had viewed vertical, and likewise for horizontal. 4. In cats that viewed lines of the same orientation with both eyes during rearing, a substantially smaller proportion of units were selective for orientation; the preferred orientations of these units also tended to match the orientation to which the cats had been exposed. 5. Portions of some electrode penetrations showed an orderly arrangement of cells according to preferred orientation similar to that seen in normal cats, but with regions over which only nonselective cells were found. Many penetrations appeared less orderly. 6. The results are consistent with a role for early visual experience in maintaining the responsiveness and innate selectivity of cortical neurons, although they cannot entirely rule out the possibility that experience may alter or determine the preferred orientation of some cells.

scholarly journals The role of visual experience in brain inter-individual variability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sriparna Sen ◽  
Ningcong Tong ◽  
Xiaoying Wang ◽  
Yanchao Bi ◽  
Ella Striem-Amit
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Vision Loss ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Brain Plasticity ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽  
Brain Organization

Visual cortex organization is highly consistent across individuals. But to what degree does this consistency depend on life experience, in particular sensory experience? In this study, we asked whether visual cortex reorganization in congenital blindness results in connectivity patterns that are particularly variable across individuals, focusing on resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) patterns from primary visual cortex. We show that the absence of shared visual experience results in more-variable RSFC patterns across blind individuals than sighted controls. Increased variability is specifically found in areas that show a group difference between the blind and sighted in their RSFC. These findings reveal a relationship between brain plasticity and individual variability in which reorganization manifests variably across individuals. We further investigated the different patterns of reorganization in the blind, showing that the connectivity to frontal regions, proposed to have a role in reorganization of the visual cortex of the blind towards higher cognitive roles, is highly variable. In a supplementary analysis, we link some of the variability in visual-to-frontal connectivity to another environmental factor - duration of formal education. Together, these findings show a role of sensory and socioeconomic experience in imposing consistency on brain organization. By revealing the idiosyncratic nature of neural reorganization, these findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in fitting sensory aids and restoration approaches for vision loss.

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